the way to Grantchester.
I can still see Margaret as I saw her that afternoon, see her fresh
fair face, with the little obliquity of the upper lip, and her brow
always slightly knitted, and her manner as of one breathlessly shy
but determined. She had rather open blue eyes, and she spoke in an
even musical voice with the gentlest of stresses and the ghost of a
lisp. And it was true, she gathered, that Cambridge still existed.
"I went to Grantchester," she said, "last year, and had tea under
the apple-blossom. I didn't think then I should have to come down."
(It was that started the curate upon his anecdote.)
"I've seen a lot of pictures, and learnt a lot about them-at the
Pitti and the Brera,-the Brera is wonderful-wonderful places,-but
it isn't like real study," she was saying presently… "We
bought bales of photographs," she said.
I thought the bales a little out of keeping.
But fair-haired and quite simply and yet graciously and fancifully
dressed, talking of art and beautiful things and a beautiful land,
and with so much manifest regret for learning denied, she seemed a
different kind of being altogether from my smart, hard, high-
coloured, black-haired and resolutely hatted cousin; she seemed
translucent beside Gertrude. Even the little twist and droop of her
slender body was a grace to me.
I liked her from the moment I saw her, and set myself to interest
and please her as well as I knew how.
We recalled a case of ragging that had rustled the shrubs of
Newnham, and then Chris Robinson's visit-he had given a talk to
Bennett Hall also-and our impression of him.
"He disappointed me, too," said Margaret.
I was moved to tell Margaret something of my own views in the matter
of social progress, and she listened-oh! with a kind of urged
attention, and her brow a little more knitted, very earnestly. The
little curate desisted from the appendices and refuse heaps and
general debris of his story, and made himself look very alert and
intelligent.
"We did a lot of that when I was up in the eighties," he said. "I'm
glad Imperialism hasn't swamped you fellows altogether."
Gertrude, looking bright and confident, came to join our talk from
the shrubbery; the initial, a little flushed and evidently in a
state of refreshed relationship, came with her, and a cheerful lady
in pink and more particularly distinguished by a pink bonnet joined
our little group. Gertrude had been sipping admiration and was not
disposed to play a passive part in the talk.
"Socialism!" she cried, catching the word. "It's well Pa isn't
here. He has Fits when people talk of socialism. Fits!"
The initial laughed in a general kind of way.
The curate said there was socialism AND socialism, and looked at
Margaret to gauge whether he had been too bold in this utterance.
But she was all, he perceived, for broad-mindness, and he stirred
himself (and incidentally his tea) to still more liberality of
expression. He said the state of the poor was appalling, simply
appalling; that there were times when he wanted to shatter the whole
system, "only," he said, turning to me appealingly, "What have we
got to put in its place?"
"The thing that exists is always the more evident alternative," I
said.
The little curate looked at it for a moment. "Precisely," he said
explosively, and turned stirring and with his head a little on one
side, to hear what Margaret was saying.
Margaret was saying, with a swift blush and an effect of daring,
that she had no doubt she was a socialist.
"And wearing a gold chain!" said Gertrude, "And drinking out of
eggshell! I like that!"
I came to Margaret's rescue. "It doesn't follow that because one's
a socialist one ought to dress in sackcloth and ashes."
The initial coloured deeply, and having secured my attention by
prodding me slightly with the wrist of the hand that held his
teacup, cleared his throat and suggested that "one ought to be
consistent."
I perceived we were embarked upon a discussion of the elements. We
began an interesting little wrangle one of those crude discussions
of general ideas that are dear to the heart of youth. I and
Margaret supported one another as socialists, Gertrude and Sybil and
the initial maintained an anti-socialist position, the curate
attempted a cross-bench position with an air of intending to come
down upon us presently with a casting vote. He reminded us of a
number of useful principles too often overlooked in argument, that
in a big question like this there was much to be said on both sides,
that if every one did his or her duty to every one about them there
would be no difficulty with social problems at all, that over and
above all enactments we needed moral changes in people themselves.
My cousin Gertrude was a difficult controversialist to manage, being
unconscious of inconsistency in statement and absolutely impervious
to reply. Her standpoint was essentially materialistic; she didn't
see why she shouldn't have a good time because other people didn't;